Re: North America's Bronze Age?

Alan Crozier <name1.name2@xxxxxxxxx > wrote:
"Peter Alaca"wrote
johansson wrote:

First I would like to point to this interesting article:
Levine Mary Ann,

Mary Ann Levine, that is.

Determining the Provenance of native copper
artifacts from Northeastern North America: evidence from
.> instrumental neutron activation analysis
Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 34, Issue 4, April 2007,
page 572-587

Great show-off!
There is not even an abstract available.

Here it is:

Thank you. That is better.

"The emergence of archaeological interest in native copper in the
mid-1800s developed in concert with explanations that privileged the
Lake Superior area over other potential sources of copper. Most
scholars have thus assumed that when copper artifacts first appeared
in Northeastern North America, they arrived as finished implements or
were locally made from Lake Superior raw materials. Procurement
models that point to Lake Superior as the sole source of native
copper have been widely accepted in the absence of systematic
large-scale testing. This article evaluates the dominant model for
native copper procurement and presents trace element data derived
from instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) to determine
whether hunter-gatherers in the Northeast utilized one dominant
source of copper or in fact exploited a number of geological
deposits. I specifically report on the chemical characterization of
copper from 13 discrete geological deposits and 18 archaeological
sites dating to the Late Archaic (ca. 5000-3000 B.P.) and Early
Woodland (ca. 3000-2000 B.P.) periods to suggest that the dominant
model for native copper procurement is oversimplified."

And an extract from the Conclusions:

"The dominant model of native copper
procurement was not a scientifically established archaeological
reality but an historical construction based on generations
of unsubstantiated assertions about the importance of the Lake
Superior sources of native copper. Impressive deposits of native
copper are in fact part of many other landscapes in eastern
Canada, New England, the Middle Atlantic, and Appalachia.
The geological distribution of copper throughout the Eastern
Woodlands supports 16th and 17th century observations that
native copper existed in areas then occupied by Native Americans."

"This project ... has demonstrated that geological sources of
native copper are geochemically distinguishable from one another
and that Late Archaic and Early Woodland populations
likely procured native copper from distinctly different deposits.
Rather than being static for millennia upon millennia
hunter-gatherer procurement patterns were dynamic. The trace
element data derived from INAA demonstrate that eastern
sources of copper, most especially those in Nova Scotia,
appear to have been sought after and incorporated into the
material world of Early Woodland peoples."

Copper is not bronze.
And AFAIK there never was a NA bronze age.

The word "bronze" is not mentioned anywhere in the article.

No surprise.

BTW My impression from a couple of abstracts I read
this morning is that the conclusion of different sources
of ore is not new.

--
pa.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Copper Casting In America (Trevelyan)
    ... >>which would melt out and separate before the copper would melt. ... >the surface of the ingot sinks in the manner normal to most metals. ... different procedure from what is required to process pure native copper. ... there are impure ores present in the region as well. ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: Copper Casting In America (Trevelyan)
    ... >>which would melt out and separate before the copper would melt. ... >the surface of the ingot sinks in the manner normal to most metals. ... different procedure from what is required to process pure native copper. ... there are impure ores present in the region as well. ...
    (sci.anthropology)
  • Re: Copper Casting In America (Trevelyan)
    ... >> Much has been bandied about concerning the purity of the copper from the UP, ... >> This is native copper that has been pounded from its matrix by glacial ... >> You can see that this particular sample was nearly 15% silver! ... >artifacts in the upper Great Lakes area; ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: Copper Casting In America (Trevelyan)
    ... >> Much has been bandied about concerning the purity of the copper from the UP, ... >> This is native copper that has been pounded from its matrix by glacial ... >> You can see that this particular sample was nearly 15% silver! ... >artifacts in the upper Great Lakes area; ...
    (sci.anthropology)
  • Re: North Americas Bronze Age?
    ... "The emergence of archaeological interest in native copper in the ... Northeastern North America, they arrived as finished implements or were ... article evaluates the dominant model for native copper procurement and ... Early Woodland periods to suggest that the dominant ...
    (sci.archaeology)